Report Offers New Evidence of Starvation Crimes in Darfur

(Tom Dannenbaum and Oona A. Hathaway – Just Security) The world’s largest humanitarian crisis is continuing to spiral in Sudan, where the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and its former ally, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), is poised to enter its fourth year. The impact on civilians has been severe. In a briefing to the United Nations Security Council on January 19, Nazhat Shameem Khan, the deputy prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC), described a campaign of “widespread mass criminality” and characterized the situation as one of “collective torture.” The U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan released a report on Feb. 17 documenting RSF war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Now, new evidence is available about a specific set of international crimes carried out by the RSF. This morning, March 10, the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab (Yale HRL) published a report that relies on remote sensing technology to establish a devastating pattern of RSF conduct in the vicinity of El-Fasher, Sudan between March 31 and June 12, 2024. The report draws on multiple data sources to expose the RSF’s systematic razing of agricultural communities, destruction of livestock corrals, and displacement or killing of inhabitants in the agrarian villages that are a critical local source of food for El-Fasher. During the 10 weeks under analysis, the RSF attacked, sometimes repeatedly, 41 rural farming communities on some of the most fertile land in Darfur. Together with the RSF’s denial of humanitarian access to El-Fasher (including through constructing an earthen wall to block entry and exit completed in October 2025) and targeting of markets and community kitchens within the city, attacks on agricultural communities and systems in the surrounding area formed a critical component of the group’s starvation strategy during the 18-month siege that culminated in the fall of El-Fasher on Oct. 26, 2025. In what follows, we assess the legal significance of this new evidence. Before doing so, it is important to clarify two points. First, our analysis here does not purport to provide a comprehensive legal analysis of international crimes in Sudan, or even in the specific region around El-Fasher. Rather, it focuses on the evidence presented in the March 2026 Yale HRL report and the criminal categories it specifically implicates. Second, by way of disclosure, we have both consulted pro bono with the Yale HRL team throughout this investigation. Here, we offer our independent legal analysis of the evidence that they have brought to light. We conclude that the new Yale HRL report provides compelling evidence relevant to multiple RSF starvation crimes in the vicinity of El-Fasher, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The region is central to an ongoing ICC investigation. Additionally, the report has broader significance beyond the situation in Sudan, as it models careful investigative analysis of satellite imagery and open-source data in documenting atrocity crimes as they unfold, when on-the-ground investigations are difficult or impossible. – Report Offers New Evidence of Starvation Crimes in Darfur